B3-33 - Missiles and Warlocks (Patreon)

Maya chewed chocolate bar as she watched the Tarvana begin hustling toward the Hangy. She frowned at the sight, seeing that they were still wholeheartedly determined to snuff her and Bad Blood out. She had hoped the fliers and the destruction of their logistics lines would force some cooler heads to prevail. The problem with fanatics was their fanaticism.

“We’re as ready as we’ll ever be,” Hanna said as she entered the room Maya had deemed the War Room. It was filled with screens and holograms. The Dock, the Hangy, the marching Tarvana, and a up to date map of the Cage all floated in the center of the room.

“See, lighting a fire under their asses always work,” Maya said.

“You’re not the one striking the matches,” Hanna said and flopped down on a chair. “We’ve got about fifty-five of the sixty ships ready to go. The rest, well, it seems ships make good kinetic weapons.”

“I can only toss them from half a kilometer up,” Maya said. “It seems the System don’t want us touching his rainbow sky.”

“If we survive all of this, the engineers are pretty optimistic about being able to remove the VLS from the ships. Just provide power, missiles, and you can launch all you want.”

“Cool, I’m gonna have a torpedo room.”

“Missile room,” Hanna clarified.

“You get Izumi and the rest of the Suds out of the Cage?” Maya asked.

“Everyone who isn’t needed here has been kicked off. All we have is the ‘privy council’ and the sailors we need to keep those ships running. Roughly three hundred of them. Japan is claiming Izumi, saying he’s a national treasure. Yosi dropped him off in Ko Sumai and told them to come and get him.”

Maya chuckled. “Enchanting god Izumi. People are flocking to him to learn at his knee. Even though he hasn’t made anything good yet.”

“Magical items, who doesn’t love those?” Hanna said. “They’re a big seller, even if most people can’t use them yet.”

Maya hopped to her feet, stretching and cracking her neck. Her outfit changed from the wrinkled ship suit to her black carapace armor. She popped the helmet and tossed the rest of the chocolate bar into her mouth.

“Alright, time for mama to make her money,” Maya said. She opened a door in the War Room, beyond it lay the RSH and the defense lines that that Bad Blood’s Tarvana were manning.

“Hey,” Hanna said. “Good luck.”

“I’ve got a massively big Luck stat,” Maya said. “It’ll be easy peasy, done before dinner.”

“I remember you saying that before,” she said.

“And I was totally right,” Maya said. “Well, mostly. If I buy it, you’ve got Yosi to run the Cage. She’s got the levels and the dimensional awareness leveled up.”

Hanna sighed. “Yeah,” she said. “This isn’t about who’s gonna run the Cage, it’s about you coming back safely. Your brother may have harsh words if you die, Chu too.”

“Buncha worrywarts,” Maya said. “This battle is brought to you by the United States Military Industrial Complex, of course we’re gonna win.”

“The lowest bidders selling the cheapest product they can,” Hanna said. “Sounds like NASA.”

“It’s all good stuff,” Maya said. “We got out hands on more than we thought possible. I guess a lot of the good ol’ American weapons aren’t all that useful post-Integration.”

“I can’t believe that the Colonel sold all of that to you,” Hanna shook her head.

“He started up his own settlement and is now asking to join the 3S Alliance,” Maya said.

“What a tool.”

“I know right.”

“You gonna take up his offer?”

“He’s corrupt, got access to tons of pre-Integration weapons, and has a tyrannical bent, that like checks all my dream man boxes,” Maya said.

“He is pretty cute, in a grim, blood and iron, post apocalyptic warrior king way.”

“Bet he snores though.”

Maya and Hanna laughed. Hanna stepped forward and hugged Maya. “Be safe, kiddo.”

“You too.” Maya said. “Keep an eye on Marcus, he pretends to be a harden soldier, but he’s probably the most emotional of all of us Sullivan kids. Even Malcolm is cold blooded sometimes.”

“Oh, don’t worry. I’ll take care of him.” Hanna gave Maya an exaggerated eyebrow wag.

“He’s taken, got a girl and a kid in Germany.”

“So much for me marrying into the wealth and prestige of House Sullivan,” Hanna said.

“You’re nearly twice his age,” Maya said.

“Age is meaningless now. We’re all gonna live centuries, kiddo.”

Maya laughed and gave a final wave to Hanna. She stepped through the door and into the RSH.

***

“They are six kilometers away,” Tender said over her comm. Maya checked her HUD and saw the mass of Tarvana highlighted in red approaching their lines. “Bad Blood says she ready and awaiting the fight. She is also requesting more weapons.”

“Her and everyone else,” Maya muttered as she walked alongside a beat-up Nissan truck carrying cargo. There was a moment of disconnect as she saw the Tarvana driver whose head barely rose above the steering wheel, wave at her.

For a people who never used system tech, the Tarvana were very adaptable to the usage of obsolete human technology.  It only took a few hours of tutorials within the Cage by human operators to show them how to drive a truck, dig a hole, set up a generator, and even blast some crappy top 40 music. The latter Maya believed was a harsh joke on her and the Tarvana.

Ignorance was a dictator’s best weapon. If they controlled what people who learn, what they could accomplish, then they were able to make them do what they wanted. The Tarvana were just ignorant, but like any other species with intelligence, they were adaptable. They glommed onto the trucks and the music and they worked incredibly hard to build up the defenses of the Hanganathorie.

And in less than an hour they would be killing one another. Maya stopped in her walk and took in the sight. She looked at the milling Tarvana. They weren’t just hard workers, they were also very brave. Of the five thousand that had arrived, nearly all of them were preparing for the fight, minus those that turned traitor and those that had died. They carried weapons that they had crafted themselves, others that Maya had given them, and even more carried salvaged human weapons. They weren’t designed for their hands, but the Tarvana were adaptable, some even able to change the way their hands were to operate the weapons. It was their ‘thing’. They could heal themselves, they could mutate their bodies, and they weren’t all that phased about dying.

“How are we looking, Roci?” Maya asked.

A bit of static interrupted the response, but then Roci’s voice came in loud and clear. “We’re ready. Hanna suggested keelhauling some people to work faster, but George said that was a bit much.”

“Trust George,” Maya paused and snorted. Roci did the same. “You’re getting the correct telemetry?”

“All green by green, boss,” Roci replied. “If the missiles can launch, then your mish-mashed, jury-rigged targeting system will guide them home.”

“Sounds good,” Maya replied.

“We do have a minor issue,” Roci said. “Those soldiers that Chu brought aren’t leaving. They’ve decided to hire on as your personal bodyguard, as long as you keep them in levels and whiskey.”

“Personal bodyguards?” Maya snorted. “They’re all lower level than I am.”

“I think that biological brother of yours-“

“Your uncle.”

“Non House Sullivan biological male sibling,” Roci continued, “and Chu have been talking a bit too much. They’re claiming they’re starting a Praetorian guard or Jannisaries or something like that. I’m not all that well versed in human history, but didn’t all of those groups go corrupt after a few hundred years?”

“I guess it’s the thought that counts,” Maya said.

“They’ve seen the riches and power of House Sullivan and they want their cut,” Roci said. “Can’t trust them. System Titles are stronger than DNA ties.”

“Well, we’ll sink the ship when we get there,” Maya said. “Let’s just focusing on defeating the Blood Harvester army and then we’ll see who needs guards and who needs a history lesson.”

“I also don’t think Yosi will be able to hold open the threshold for that long,” Roci said. “I know she’s leveled her Dimensional Awareness and Threshold, but she’s not as strong as you are.”

“She can do it,” Maya said.

“I was hoping you would also have second thoughts about Yosi being a linch pin in your plans and would have returned to the Cage,” Roci said. “You are needlessly risking your life once again. For what? So that those idiot Tarvana don’t run off and betray you again? Dying for Bad Blood is not going to make your death special.”

“It’s what’s needed.”

“What’s needed is to gain more mana and buy more stuff. There is no value in helping out the Tarvana here, you’re gaining nothing but another headache and a source of betrayal.”

“Maybe,” Maya replied. “It still has to be done.”

Roci groaned over the comms and then sighed. “So be it. I’ll say “I told you so”, when all of this goes tits up and the Tarvana betray us.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“Of course, you’ll probably be dead by then.” Roci cut the connection as Maya chuckled.

Bad Blood was seated in a wheelchair. Her badly burned, torn, and battered body still hadn’t been seen by Nan, due to the woman refusing any medical treatments. Maya could understand a bit of it, it wasn’t so long ago she had held off on getting her hand regrown. If the leader of the heretic Tarvana wanted to be immobile and a burden by not getting her limbs regrown, that was her decision.

Maya figured it was a sort of badge of honor for her. There had been an attempt on her life, the Mother’s Blade agent having blown themselves up in her tent. She had survived and now she was commanding her people into war. It probably made sense in a Tarvanian way.

“We good up here?” Maya asked, peering into the floating screens.

“We require more weapons and explosives,” Bad Blood said.

“Well, lets hope that the missiles take out a good number of them,” Maya said. “That way we won’t need extra weapons and explosives.”

“Still not trusting me?” Bad Blood asked.

“I think handing you a bunch of guns and bombs that don’t need mana to run is a bad idea for me in the long run. Right now, its about our mutual survival, but you’ve already shown you’re willing to cut ties to seek a better deal.”

The woman chuckled, it sounded like rocks grating. She coughed afterward and leaned back in her chair, clearly exhausted.

“Nan could fix all that in a few days,” Maya said.

The woman frowned. “I need to show my people I will be here for them, regardless of my injuries. I will stand beside them, even if I have to die.”

“Sounds crazy, but who am I to judge?” Maya looked at the screens again and then into the distant horizon. She couldn’t see anything out in the vast darkness of the RSH, but her helmet and sensor box brought the images up for her.

The Blood Harvester army was nearing, five kilometers now. They were all riled up, the commanders, leaders, and bosses literally lashing the troops to move faster. It was a knee weakening sight. All the thousands of armed soldiers trotting across the horizon, but Maya had to tell herself that she out leveled every one of them.

But a pack of dogs could take down a lion. Maya chuckled at the pretentious thought.

“Looks like it’s gonna be one hell of a fight,” Maya said out loud.

One of the Tarvana soldiers grunted in agreement. He was a massive man, wearing battered armor and carrying an M47 Dragon on his shoulder. Another of Colonel Canton’s supplied weapons. The Dragon was similar to the Javelin, but with a shorter range and infrared sights that needed to be kept on the target. They were considered, by the US military, to be obsolete, but one thing the US military liked to do was keep a lot of their old weapons just in case they were needed once again.

The shorter range meant a higher risk for the Tarvana manning the weapons. The only upside of the Tarvana mindset was that they weren’t all that fazed by the possibility of dying. Plus they like the explosive power of the guided missiles. The weapons were good enough to take out lower leveled soldiers and keep the mid leveled ones busy.

Maya was sadden to learn her SMAK did not work in the mana purge. The high mana cost drained the tiny battery within it, allowing for only half a dozen shots before it was depleted. Human weapons on the other hand, did not require mana and were not effected by the mana purge.

Perhaps she should have found a group of aliens in her own home universe that were more technologically advanced. Maya grinned at the thought of some kind of anti-matter bomb or alien spaceship firing lasers down upon the Tarvana. The multiverse had those kinds of ships and weapons, but they all shared the same thing in common. They ran on mana. A futuristic fusion powered ship would have been awesome.

She made a note about that. Her entire universe was Integrated a month before, that meant everyone in the universe was suffering, maybe not Tier 2 levels of suffering, but it was still pretty bad. She wondered about the high tech civilizations out there, did they suffer the same amount of death and destruction humans had?

The rinky-dink International Space Station had stopped working. If there were manned ships out there, they would have stopped working too. She wondered if there were graveyards of floating interstellar ships that were caught up in Integration. Maya shook her head. She was focusing on the wrong things at the moment.

“Well, let loose the puppers of war,” Maya said into her comm.

“Opening second threshold,” Yosi said, there was a stain in her voice.

“We’ve got telemetry and targets,” Roci said. “Firing away. Let’s slag some assholes!”

***

“Fuck, this is awesome,” Chu said, staring through a transparent wall. The Dock lay before them, the fifty five ships scurrying with their skeleton crews and preparing to launch their missiles.

A wailing siren began crying and everyone in the War Room stopped what they were doing. There was a window showing Yosi and Roci. Yosi was in a nest, her eyes closed and her reptillian face twisted in concentration. Roci was also in another chair, this one connected to sixty worker drones that were busily moving around the decks of the ships, holding strange instruments.

“Here we go! Showtime!” one of the Javelin soldiers cried out. Chu didn’t really know the man, but there had been a few in Hawaii that fit the bill of what Maya wanted and he had brought them as fast as he could. It was still an unknown if they would pan out in the long run.

Everyone had reached level 25 or higher after their attacks upon the Tarvana supply lines. It was an incredible thing, Chu had nearly died more than a dozen times since Integration. Gaining ten levels for just firing missiles in the safety of the Cage was too much like cheating for him. But he wouldn’t say no to the levels he had gained.

There was a roar as the first missile’s exhaust began blowing out of the VLS. It was a tower of smoke, fire, and noise, but one of the worker drones stepped forward with a large box and everyone watched as all that exhaust and fire were sucked up within it.

They were all caught off guard that they almost didn’t see the first missile rise out of the VLS and then flash upward into the hole in the ceiling of the Dock.

“We’re looking good,” Roci said as the missiles flashed out of the Cage and were now guided by the sensor boxes and cobbled together computers Maya had created to replace the Aegis system. “Splashdown.”

***

“I sense the opening!” the mage cried. She flinched and her long twisted claws pointed at the horizon. “There. A dimensional threshold has opened. Vast and… I sense death and destruction coming!”

“Shields up!” the High General shouted.

The mana shields had barely been formed before the High General heard the strange roaring in the sky. He tracked fast moving objects, dozens of them tearing across the sky. He couldn’t sense their mana and was confused. Ranged weapons always had mana that could be disrupted. There was a whole occupational path that disrupted mana within technology.

A distant thud and boom filled the air. The High General saw explosions erupting within the first elements of his soldiers. The low leveled Tarvana were shredded, their bodies torn up and whole sections just vanished. Those who had been able to raise their own mana shields walked about, stunned and bleeding.

“It is coming again!” the mage shouted.

The High General cursed. “What are they firing. I cannot sense the mana within them.”

“It is not system tech,” the mage said. “I too cannot sense the mana that powers them. It is like they do not exist.”

The now familiar screech and roar filled the air. The High General watched as dozens more missiles slammed home into the front ranks of his army. Hundreds were dying with each strike, but there were sixty thousand of them. The heretics were only four kilometers away. They would make it.

***

“They’re putting up mana shields,” Tender said.

“Does it work?” Maya asked.

“There are occupational paths that allow for a SIL to be able to take tremendous amounts of damage and mitigate it,” Tender said.

“We call them ‘tanks’,” Maya replied. “So some of them are tanking the missiles?”

“Yes. It appears they have been prioritized by their leaders and are begin recharged with mana. They are forcibly killing lesser Tarvana to shift their mana into the tanks.”

“Well, shit,” Maya muttered, shuddering slightly. She had hoped the bombardment of missiles would deplete the mana of the army. Which would make them easier to kill when they reached the defenses. If they were willing to keep feeding their tanks with mana via sacrifices, then the bombardment might not entirely work.

Maya sighed. “Well, in for a penny,” she said. “Keep firing. Try to target the tanks.”

“The targeting system you’ve created is not accurate enough to target individuals,” Tender said. “But I can try to aim them into the general area.”

“Atta, boy.” She paused and then grinned. “They’re reaching the first layer, let’s see what happens.”

***

“Move! Move!” the squad brute commanded. The thick Tarvana was carrying a sickle like sword and snarled at any of the lesser Tarvana that slowed down.

He could see the walls that the heretics hide behind. They were so close and the missiles that were striking down upon them weren’t as effective as they had first thought. They didn’t carry that big of an explosion and the brute’s mana shields were powerful enough to fend off an attack.

The purge might have weakened some of the Blood Harvesters, but they knew what was needed to keep their mana up. No mana potions existed, but centuries of trial and error had showed them how to pull mana from living SIL to replenish their own. His sword dripped with the blood of the useless, so that the strong would reach the walls.

The gray ground was disturbed before the brute. But that didn’t even register to his mind as all his focus was upon the telltale noise of the missiles approaching. He had great hearing and he was quick with his mana shields. He would-

The ground fountained up underneath the brute. Confusion his him, then the pain as his legs were blown away from the mines places beneath him. All around him more mines detonated, shredding the advancing Tarvana.

***

“Ouch,” Chu whispered. “That’s gonna sting in the morning.”

A reddish computer generated mist hung over the first elements of the Tarvana army. They had just walked into about every claymore mine that Maya could get her hands on.

“Go human technology,” Marcus muttered.

“They can’t detect the mines,” Hanna said. “They’re too dependent on mana signatures and the like.” She grinned and then frowned as more explosions began to erupt. The sensor box images did not censor the raining bloody chunks of bodies and the screaming of dying people.

“This is bad ass,” one of the Javelin soldiers said.

***

“Mines, rockets, missiles,” the High General growled. “We cannot detect any of them.”

“They are not using mana,” the mage said.

“I can fucking tell,” the High General snarled. “Bring me the scroll! Prepare yourself, mage! We move!”

The mage stared at the General and then nodded. “Bring the sacrifices!” she shouted and the gathered men and women began rushing about.

A soldier rushed to the High General, bringing a golden inlayed box. He snapped open the top and within it lay a scroll, one of the riches that had been given to the High General. A great power from the Mother.

The mages and soldiers pulled and dragged dozens of terrified Tarvana into a circle around the High General. Knives and blades were pulled out and pressed to necks.

“I summon thee! Dimensional Warlocks!” the High General screamed. “Greater Teleportation!”

The Tarvana necks were cut and the air thickened and swirled as mana was released. It flowed in a blue mist toward the scroll, the magic of it pulling upon all mana that existed in the area.

A great wrenching tear opened before the High General. From it marched a dozen black robed men and women.

“We are summoned, High General. The Mother is displeased.” The tallest of the warlocks hissed.

“Then I shall face her and she will judge me,” the High General snapped back. “We are being attacked by manaless weapons from a dimensional threshold.”

“The Merchant’s ‘cage’?” another warlock asked.

“Yes. Seize it.”

The warlocks all tilted their heads as one. They all faced the same direction, their hoods sliding off their heads, revealing shiny scales and throbbing glowing veins. Even with the mana purge, they still radiated powerful auras of mana.

***

“Alright, Yosi. I think-“ Maya flinched and clutched her head. “Oh, shit.”

“What is wrong?” Tender asked.

“It’s… someone’s using a dimensional lock on the threshold. Yosi’s threshold. Fuck. Fuck. They’re taking control of it.” Maya looked toward the approaching Tarvana army. The survivors were reaching the walls and she saw that many weren’t the canon fodder that went in first.

***

“We have it,” the warlock hissed.

“Dimensional Bridge!” another warlock shouted. A long line appeared before them, rising from the warlock and into the sky, stretching for kilometers. It began to widen and warp, suddenly becoming long tunnel.

“My Retinue!” the High General shouted. “Move!”

Five hundred mid-grade warriors rushed toward the tunnel. The moment they reached it they disappeared, a flash of light and they were gone. The warlocks had connected with the opened threshold and the High General grinned as the fight was now where the cowards were striking from.